Editorial: Guns and mental health

Friday

Mar 22, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Florida Senate President Don Gaetz probably meant well when he said, "I wish we could pass a law against crazy." But the phrase hurts.

Sen. Gaetz made the comment while discussing gun violence and the need to prevent it through closer attention to mental health. The comment was included in a story by Lloyd Dunkelberger that appeared in Wednesday's Herald-Tribune.

Gaetz, an advocate of gun rights, is correct that Florida needs adequate mental-health services. It has long lacked them -- a mark of shame on the state.

But other aspects of the Senate leader's phrasing are unsettling.

"Crazy" is a common term with many meanings, sometimes positive. When spoken in reference to genuine mental illness, however, the word has a dehumanizing effect. It tends to erase the distinctions and suffering of mental illnesses and toss them into one dismissive heap. This thwarts public understanding and is unhelpful -- especially when coming from one of Florida's most influential lawmakers.

Gaetz is right -- though he phrased it badly -- that "you can't legislate against crazy."

Laws present people with a choice: Obey, or pay the consequences. Mental illness, by contrast, offers no choice. Schizophrenia, severe depression and other debilitating mental problems come on without invitation. Like cancer, arthritis and Alzheimer's, they pay no attention to statutes.

Medical care is available for diseases of the body. But that is often not the case for mental illnesses. Tragically, our health-care system does not provide parity, and society has tolerated the inequity. That must change for the better.

Like Gaetz, we too wish that the scourge of gun massacres would cease. Mental illness was either known or suspected among some of these killers. Yet mass shootings are extremely rare compared to the everyday bloodshed -- driven by such common motives as robbery, revenge, jealousy and fear -- that gives the U.S. one of the highest gun-violence rates in the developed world. In thousands of gun murders annually, no history of mental illness is established.

This point gets lost, all too easily, in the debate over gun safety reforms.

To be sure, Florida and the nation do have a mental-health problem on their hands: the lack of access to adequate treatment. When it comes to gun murders, however, the country cannot ignore the factor of proliferating firearms -- America's weapons of mass destruction.

Lawmakers should face up to these challenges on both fronts, adding mental-health care access and enacting sensible gun safety steps. A one-sided approach -- blaming it on the mentally ill -- is a dereliction of duty.